Americans should not just tolerate dissent. They should
encourage it. In this provocative and wide-ranging book, Steven
Shiffrin makes this case by arguing that dissent should be promoted
because it lies at the heart of a core American value: free speech.
He contends, however, that the country's major
institutions--including the Supreme Court and the mass
media--wrongly limit dissent. And he reflects on how society and
the law should change to encourage nonconformity.
Shiffrin is one of the country's leading first-amendment
theorists. He advances his dissent-based theory of free speech with
careful reference to its implications for such controversial topics
of constitutional debate as flag burning, cigarette advertising,
racist speech, and subsidizing the arts. He shows that a
dissent-based approach would offer strong protection for free
speech--he defends flag burning as a legitimate form of protest,
for example--but argues that it would still allow for certain
limitations on activities such as hate speech and commercial
speech. Shiffrin adds that a dissent-based approach reveals
weaknesses in the approaches to free speech taken by postmodernism,
Republicanism, deliberative democratic theory, outsider
jurisprudence, and liberal theory.
Throughout the book, Shiffrin emphasizes the social functions of
dissent: its role in combating injustice and its place in cultural
struggles over the meanings of America. He argues, for example,
that if we took a dissent-based approach to free speech seriously,
we would no longer accept the unjust fact that public debate is
dominated by the voices of the powerful and the wealthy. To ensure
that more voices are heard, he argues, the country should take such
steps as making defamation laws more hospitable to criticism of
powerful people, loosening the grip of commercial interests on the
media, and ensuring that young people are taught the importance of
challenging injustice.
Powerfully and clearly argued, Shiffrin's book is a major
contribution to debate about one of the most important subjects in
American public life.
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